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... for your wall. Ever wanted to basically do what Skeletor never could? Now’s your chance! Well, as long as you have a rather ludicrous amount of money, this massive head of poor Battle Cat from Masters of the Universe could be yours to mount above your fireplace in a mixture of sadness and pride.

So there’s apparently a CSI: Cyber show now, which has a bunch of my techie pals stifling giggles and/or rolling their eyes at the fictionalized e-shenanigans being broadcast to the masses. I honestly can’t get past the “cyber” tag, a weird bit of atavistic jargon whose continued usage as prefix to “-crime” is a testament to the law enforcement community’s abilities to keep up with the “hep” lingo used by those zany Kids of Today. Joe Friday would be proud.

Given “cyber” prefix’s roots in the era of Zip drives and soul-patches, I decided to spam my twitter feed this morning with era appropriate story hooks and script suggestions. (You’ll have to supply your own third-wave ska and electronica soundtrack.)

I expect a hefty check and job offer from CBS will arrive any moment now.

But that’s where we come in, Internet. Our ability to one day play this marvel of tabletop gaming is entirely in our own hands. Unfortunately, the price tag is incredibly high, because Mayfair’s goal is to ultimately to make a playable collector’s item for hardcore fans of the show with all the quality craftsmanship they could hope for.

Is the whole thing a joke? Yes and no, but mostly no. All along, this game has represented the ridiculousness of Ben Wyatt’s vision of a game. This Deluxe version of the game is as close to the on-screen version of the game that you see in season six of Parks and Recreation as we can manage (and for us to be comfortable about the playability of it).

So many clauses of an RPS employment contract are written in blood that, honestly, you start skipping past them once you realised they’re mostly harmless blood curses compelling one to e.g. substitute in “foot-to-ball” any time I try to write “foot-to-ball”.

Those reams of sticky vellum must surely also contain something about Games Workshop games, as here I am writing about Warhammer Quest coming to PC in January, even though it’s a port of a mobile game from 2013. Well, the blood curses are making me, and the fact that a quick look finds folks saying good things about the mobile version, aside from its microtransaction-o-rama.

I first saw this newspaper clipping at Bad Newspaper a couple of weeks ago. Today I found out where it came from. The story is from Forge Press, the student newspaper at Sheffield University. You can see the full page here. The paper is to be commended for saying what many were already thinking.

In case you are confused, the British actor is named Benedict Cumberbatch. I think.

The Venture Brothers cartoon show/religion has been off the airwaves for a long time, with the last new episode airing on July 21, 2013. But the long drought is about to end, with an hourlong SPECIAL premiere for season six on January 19th, 2015 at midnight ET/PT. The Beat ran into co-creator Jackson Publick on one of his very, very rare forays out of his studio at New York Comic-Con, and he confirmed that he and Doc Hammer had been slaving away for the last two years.

And now the wait is over.

And just to tide you over those last few perilous weeks, Adult Swim is selling a set of Venture Brother sheets.

Venture Brothers SHEETS. In 300-thread count comfort.

Tragically they are only available in QUEEN SIZE, which for NYC apartment dwellers who huddle entire families into tiny twin-sized bunk beds is a sad sad thing. Maybe we can just buy a set and make a dress out of them. The sheets go for a merer $50.

Whether you dream about Brock Samson, Molotov Cocktease or just seeing a new episode of the Venture Brothers, these sheets are sure to swaddle you to slumber.

UPDATE: Although the FAQ confirms that these sheets are 300 thread count, it is not known if they are 100% cotton or the dreaded “percale” polyester blend. The Beat only sleeps in 100% pure cotton, so this is troubling.

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT UPDATE: UPon rereading the press release, it only confirms “An hour long special premiering on January 19th.” So this may not actually be Season Six. But it is SOMETHING.

It's no secret that toddlers can be a handful. At times, mommy or other caretakers are at their wit's end, and that's a dicey time when humor can be a great coping mechanism. Sometimes one just has to laugh, or else they might cry. There's a Tumblr for that. "If Toddlers Texted" is a Tumblr (and a Facebook page) that anyone at the mercy of the terrible twos (threes or fours) can visit to get perspective and some laughs.

And here’s another second look at a comics property that already had a time at the dance—Global Frequency, already the subject of a failed project way back in the prehistory of 2005, is getting another look as a TV show, with Jerry Bruckheimer once again leading the way.

The comic book Global Frequency came out from Wildstorm during the days when it was edgy and daring.. (For those of you who came in late, Wildstorm was once an imprint of DC Comics that put out more wild and crazy adventure themed stuff. It was shut down a few years ago and its remaining properties were folded into Vertigo.)

Written by Warren Ellis and drawn by a bunch of artists including Garry Leach, Steve Dillon, David Lloyd and Gene Ha, it followed a high tech privately sourced elite crime solving organization—an idea that has kind of been done to death since then but it still works when done well. (Person of Interest?) A pilot was made starring Michelle Forbes and Josh Hopkins in 2005 but it went nowhere. But those were the days when comic books were just things printed on paper and not idea space thought peaches.

Now it’s back with Bruckheimer producing and Rockne S. O’Bannon writing a new pilot. O’Bannon is well known for creating Farscape, and he’s also working on Constantine, but don’t hold that against him.

As Deadline helpfully points tout, this is part of the EXPLOSION of WB TV projects based on comics, joining the on air Arrow, Gotham, Flash and Constantine, and the upcoming iZombie and Supergirl, which has a series commitment at CBS, and Lucifer, also at Fox.

I don’t enjoy Borderlands. I find the core first-person shooting unsatisfying, and I don’t enjoy how its action-RPG side augments that with boring incremental skills and randomised weapons.

I do, however, dig the idea of a weird west planet on the outskirts of known space filled with chancers, treasure-hunters, weirdos, and gangs of murderers. That’s nice, that. And gosh oh golly, I have very much enjoyed watching the new trailer for Telltale’s episodic adventure game series Tales from the Borderlands. It’s got all the griftin’, cheatin’, sneakin’, and rootin’ tootin’ robot shootin’ I would want from a game set in that world. Come see!

We've all heard stories of people who look at a website mockup and say something like "It needs more pop!" or "Make it sleeker," without being specific about what they're looking for. It can be a pain, but this tongue-firmly-in-cheek graphic translates those phrases to language you can actually use.

If you're a designer, or have worked on a redesign project as a developer, tester, or even project manager, you've probably heard the empty, "gut" feedback from the people in charge about how they want a design to make them feel as opposed to what it should look like. It can be frustrating to be sure, and you'll catch that in the graphic below, but it does actually offer some suggestions and guidance to help you build a design they may be looking for.

Evil Dead will rise from the grave again—this time, thanks to Starz. The premium network will bring Sam Raimi and producing partner Rob Tapert back together with none other than Bruce Campbell as the series’ main character, Ash. Groovy.

The press release from Starz says that the show will continue the story of the Evil Dead films in ten half-hour episodes:

The STARZ Original series officially titled “Ash Vs. Evil Dead” will be 10 half-hour episodes. Bruce Campbell will be reprising his role as Ash, the stock boy, aging lothario, and chainsaw-handed monster hunter who has spent the last 30 years avoiding responsibility, maturity and the terrors of the Evil Dead. When a Deadite plague threatens to destroy all of mankind, Ash is finally forced to face his demons –personal and literal. Destiny, it turns out, has no plans to release the unlikely hero from its “Evil” grip.

Campbell added, “I’m really excited to bring this series to the Evil Dead fans worldwide – it’s going to be everything they have been clamoring for: serious deadite ass-kicking and plenty of outrageous humor.”

Or, in summary: “We are Starz, and this… is our boom stick.”

Ash Vs. Evil Dead has a TBD start date at some point in 2015 with the first episode directed by Raimi himself, and the entire series was written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Tom Spezialy. With the original team back together, fans are going to be expecting a lot out of this series, so it had better deliver—especially because as with any reboot, there are likely to be hordes calling for its doom.

Film director Kevin Smith posted these pictures of himself to his Facebook page, one of which is the "after" picture of him having shaven his trademark facial hair. People familiar with Smith, what do you think? Does he look better with beard and mustache or without? And what on Earth would Silent Bob say? (Yeah, likely nothing.) -Via Uproxx

There's a Starbucks that sits at a place where the walls of space, time, and parallel universes is thin. It's where authors and fictional characters go to pick up their coffee. And, of course, it's a particularly entertaining tumblr thought up by two English majors and a history major.

Cover art is designed with visual appeal in mind, and the best cover art grab the buyer’s attention from across the aisle, begging them to take a closer look.

Video games used to rely on cover art to help sell cartridges- they presented polished and generally exciting scenes to lure gamers into buying the game, then gamers would discover the in-game graphics looked nothing like the cover art.

That’s why it’s best to think of cover art as a piece of concept art, rather than a faithful representation of what to expect from the game.

With that in mind you should check out GeekTyrant's collection of 15 Best Pieces Of 1980s NES Cover Art, where each piece is paired with a video showing the actual in-game graphics, so you can get a feel for how far off the cover art really is!

The earlier trailers and clips for Disney's superhero film Big Hero 6 have focused mainly on how funny and adorable its characters—especially medical robot Baymax—are. But this trailer hits home the tragedy at the heart of the film.

The acclaimed author of Watchmen has recently finished his second novel, Jerusalem. Two interesting facts about it: 1) it's not set in Jerusalem, but Northampton, England, and 2) at over one million words, it's almost twice the size of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Moore has said he doubts people will even be able to lift it.

When a beloved book is adapted for film or TV, fans are going to have a lot of understandable concerns: will the spirit of the original work be destroyed? Will the adaptation be crafted by the right creative talent? And will any and all of the story’s diversity be honored? In the case of Starz’s series adaptation of American Gods: yes, absolutely, and praise be to Bryan Fuller.

In an awesome interview with Den of Geek, the Hannibal showrunner explained that preserving the diversity in Neil Gaiman’s Americana fantasy novel is a priority (bolding is my own, because booyah):

In our conversations about who our ideals are for specific roles, Shadow is described as… is he a gypsy? Is he Hispanic? Is he black? Or is he all of those things in one? So we know that he is not white! I think if we cast a white man to play Shadow we would be the biggest assholes on television.

The decision to cast a POC as Shadow might seem like an obvious one, but whitewashing roles is alarmingly frequent: look at the inexcusable casting in Exodus, for example, or the CW’s choice for Arrow‘s Ra’s al Ghul. Starz has a pretty solid record of diverse casting (yeaaaah Spartacus), but still, it’s heartening to hear Fuller’s conviction. Casting POC to play POC shouldn’t be controversial, but if online comment sections are any indication, there’s always going to be a peanut gallery of pinheads ready to cry “reverse racism” at the mention of diversity (American Gods is fantasy, sure, but nothing in the book is as fabricated as that bullshit concept). In the context of that idiocy, Fuller’s bluntness is refreshing: whitewashing American Gods would be f’ing insulting, regardless of any perceived ambiguity over Shadow’s race.

In the interview the showrunner also said he plans for the series to last more than a season and spoke about what viewers can expect from its 2016 debut:

We’ve broken the first three episodes, Michael Green and I, and we’re having so much fun. It’s such a different muscle to Hannibal. There’s a big, bold, sprawling world that is at our fingertips that is going to be so much fun to explore.

It’s fun to platform the world and say to Neil [Gaiman], okay, if these are the rules of this universe that you’ve created, then it would also apply in these circumstances. That’s been great for Michael and I because we’re recognising the rules and then also allowing ourselves to navigate those rules and expand the story in a fun way where those rules are supporting a greater, grander world than you’re able to see in the novel.

[...] One of the fun things about the television series we’re crafting is that for every moment that takes place, there are alternate points of view of that moment so we will see an episode that is primarily from Shadow’s point of view, and then the next episode will be primarily from Wednesday’s point of view, and then the next episode will be primarily from Laura’s point of view so there’s a fun to point of view when you’re adapting a novel like this, because it gives you the freedom to expand the world and the characters.

Considering Fuller recently compared the series’ intended scope to Game of Thrones, it’s not surprising that the show will allow for multiple points of view. Now to pass the time until 2016 fancasting Shadow! Thoughts?

What if Game of Thrones came out in the '60s and legendary graphic designer Saul Bass (the mind behind the title sequences for Psycho, Ocean's 11, and North by Northwest) created the opening titles? It would probably look a lot like this.

Praise be! In July we lost our collective shit over the announcement that Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal), Michael Green (Kings, Heroes) and Neil Gaiman (weird, perfect) would be executive producing a TV adaptation of Gaiman’s beloved 2001 book American Gods for Starz. And it just keeps getting better: For Gods fans who might have been worried that the spirit and enormous scope of the novel would be lost in its transition to the small screen, Fuller made some statements today that should reassure even the most intense of Gaiman purists.

In an interview with CraveOnline, the showrunner said the series is on-track to shoot in 2015 with an air date in 2016, adding:

It’s basically the following the events of the books, but expanding those events, and expanding the point of view to go above and beyond Shadow and Wednesday. In that way, as with Game of Thrones, there are dozens of characters that you’re tracking through the events and that’s probably the biggest similarities between the worlds, in that there’s a wide variety of characters at play.

(Interestingly, HBO actually passed on American Gods in 2011. Eat your heart out, Home Box Office!) In the interview Fuller also hints that elements from Gaiman’s 2005 book Anansi Boys will make an appearance in the show, and says the author himself “god damn well better” script some of the episodes. Speaking on Gaiman’s executive producer role and involvement in the series, Fuller said:

He’s given birth to the baby, raised to the baby, and now Michael Green and I are marrying the baby. [...] So the relationship is similar [to George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones] in that way, where he is absolutely integral to the process and also very excited just to see it coming together in the fashion that it is.

And, unlike A Song of Ice and Fire readers, American Gods fans probably don’t need to worry that the show will distract its creator from his work–Gaiman announced the completion of a new book just yesterday, so we should be set for awhile.

Chrome: It's no secret that AdBlock is one of our favorite add-ons, and it does a lot of cool things. However, it's definitely memory hungry, and can slow your system down. If you want a leaner alternative that still keeps the web clean and protects your privacy, try uBlock (or rather, µBlock.)

µBlock works on any Chromium-based browser, so you can use it in Google Chrome proper, or in Chromium for other platforms (like Linux). Once installed, the app works very similarly to Adblock Plus; it'll block ads for you, uses the same lists (namely EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Domains, and more—or you can add and customize your own sources to block), and overall keeps your browsing experience clean and trim. There's one notable difference though—µBlock uses significantly less resources than AdBlock Plus. Of course, its feature set is also a bit lighter—it doesn't do quite everything that ABP does, but if the reason you have ABP installed is primarily for adblocking and privacy protection, it'll do the trick.

I’ll include “TV nerds,” too, because the conclusion Tony Zhou (he of this analysis of the visual style of Edgar Wright) comes to is that, at least as far as the aesthetics of on-screen texting is concerned, Sherlock pretty much nails it. Filmmakers have not, however, cracked how to depict the Internet on-screen. It’s all incredibly interesting, at least if you’re me.

It’s been almost two years since XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and even with the Enemy Within expansion in between that’s too long a time to live without a new XCOM game to play. We can therefore justifiably lust over the just-announced XCOM board game coming from Fantasy Flight. It’s called XCOM: The Board Game, it requires a digital companion app to play, and it’s due out before the end of the year.

Cor, look at all the little cardboard pieces in the image above. I could roll around in those all day.

“At this point, the only thing more predictable than a New York Times trend piece that’s equal parts out of touch and condescending is the backlash that follows,” wrote Flavorwire in 2013. Flaccid trend-spotting articles are in the paper’s DNA, and we love to hate them.

But this week’s article is particularly special, because this week’s article is about us.

‘Australian Cafes Arrive In New York‘ reads the triumphant headline from Oliver Strand, who has uncovered a new phenomenon in his city: cafes named after bits of Melbourne which manage to serve coffee AND breakfast AT ONCE.

“New York is a city of immigrants and their unofficial embassies offering a taste of home: the French bistro, the English pub, the California juice bar,” he begins. “Add to that list the Australian cafe.”

GUYS, there is, apparently, a foodie scene outside of New York City, and The Times is ON IT. http://t.co/Zy6lsmfibi

“At first glance,” he writes somewhat suspiciously, “an Australian cafe may seem like an American coffee shop, with colorful idioms: brekkie (breakfast), a piccolo (a cortado), a flat white (a small latte) and “no worries” (you’re welcome).”

That’s where the trouble begins:

“But it functions differently,” he continues, “and differs from the dozen or so Australian coffee bars in New York, which offer the coffee but not the full experience.”

For instance, there is the way they work: “The cafes offer table service, with a waiter bringing your drink.”

Also, there is the way they feel: “A sunny disposition so genuine it could disarm the most brusque New Yorker.” One of three entire people interviewed for this piece, an Australian, agrees: “It’s breakfast,” he reminds us. “It’s not serious; it’s meant to be fun.”

And speaking of fun, there’s a new dance in town, and it’s called The Avocado Smash. “Sometimes called an avocado toast (and in the United States often associated with California), it’s comfort food for any time of the day,” Strand writes, with audible awe. “You smash half a ripe avocado onto a thick piece of multigrain toast, season it with salt, pepper and chile flakes, then give it a splash of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.”

Wondering what inspires such culinary adventurism? Well it appears to have something to do with surfing. “You wake up, go down to the beach, have a swim, then go have some coffee and poached eggs and toast,” says one cafe owner. “I surfed every day of my life until I came to New York,” says another.

And then the article ends, with what is possibly the most obvious quote about New York City ever to be published in its hallowed newspaper: “You don’t have surfing here. But you have a lot of other opportunities that make up for it.”

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in melbourne everybody is so nice in cafes uhuh and if you believe that I’ve got a fleet of trams here to sell you